Social Media

Twitter Client Head-to-Head: Twhirl vs Tweetdeck

Early adopters are always looking for the best way to get their mission accomplished. The Twitter mission has grown into the development of a large pool of clients, add-ons and graphing abilities that never seem to stop coming.

I personally get lost and confused daily on the best Twitter client I should be using. I spend considerable time in a browser, so the first thought was to check into one of the many FireFox extensions. That bombed quickly as I am always using different applications. Then I realized I was still using a chat client, so I looked into abilities for MSN, GTalk and the remainder. Frustration always set in because no matter where I was, Twitter was becoming a major communication channel, replacing everything else.

So I digressed from the focus on integration with existing daily applications and went on a hunt for the best standalone client. The requirements were quite simple. I want a client that has a large set of capabilities, uses limited resources, and offers a stunning UI. Twhirl was a leader in this, running on the Adobe Air platform. A recent challenger was released on the same Adobe Air platform, called TweetDeck. Let's take a look at the current version of both and compare the two from my usage tests.

User Interfaces

The immediate differences show in the way the base UI is handled. Twhirl (as shown here in figure 1 for version 0.8.3 ) goes for the sidebar look and feel. Tall and thin. You can move it where you wish and still have other applications right next to it. You can easily drag the length, but the width is fixed. Twhirl wins you over with subtle colors for general postings, replies and direct messages of those you follow. Indicators (stars) for new messages make it easy to catch up while you are away. Multiple views (for lack of a better word) are available for each type of communication.

Looking at figure 1, across the bottom we have the following:

-The input panel may be toggled on and off-The Home area is your main communication area offering what you would get in the default homepage on Twitter.com for yourself

-Replies, direct, favorites and archives have their own ability to be singled out

-Friends and Followers is a bit confusing at first glance but then makes perfect sense. You will get the avatar, current status and location for each one of a friend or follower. If you float your mouse over the avatar you may send a reply, direct message or follow that person

-Lookup and search are both available

-If you hover over the tiny icon on the far right bottom, it will show the health and amount of API requests you have used before going over. Quite a useful tool if you watch it carefully. This will assist you in setting how often to poll and update

On the right of the input area for your Tweets you have the capability to:

-Send a snapshot-Shorten a URL-Watch your character count-Send the update

Below the main friend view area you are allowed:

-Filtering to reduce and focus the stream if you follow numerous people

-Mark all as seen (basically removing the star I mentioned above for showing items as new-Refresh manually (instead of from your set preferences)-Clear the view

The ability to send a direct message, reply, retweet and follow are all icons that show when you hover over someones avatar.

Now the default for TweetDeck was way too large for first impressions as shown in figure 2. The giant, black, block of doom, with lack of color, wasn't immediately eye appealing. While you do get the avatar, you sacrifice screen real estate to have a reply, direct, follow and retweet icon. Those could have been placed as you hover over the avatar to save screen area. You are immediately presented with All Tweets (of those you follow, not public) and replies. You can add panels to your liking, but I didn't not see any way to resize them. The columns may be resorted left and right with a small menu item as shown at the bottom of figure 2.

Across the top we do have some interesting options to discuss:

-Tweet is self explanatory. It gives you the input box.

-Group will take certain users and make an auto updating panel of them. Now this was cool for watching certain users in an isolated way without using Yahoo Pipes of RSS feeds

-Search will make a panel based on keywords. A great way to watch in a polling fashion. Examples to watch are your name, company or product. This far outweighs manually refreshing Summize or daily TweetScan's that get emailed to you.

-Replies and Direct also make auto updating panels for each type

I will admit, at this point I am going back on myself. Hidden on the upper right of figure 2 was a small icon with a small number 1. This reduced the giant, black, block of doom into a single column of just recent tweets of those you follow. This can be clicked again to expand back out. I wish they had made this more prominent, and change it from the number 1 to whatever column count you have to make it apparent for expanding again.

Preferences and Options

This area is where Twhirl shines in the current releases. Twhirl offers a myriad of settings. Multiple account ability is the first item I enjoyed. You may enter multiple login information and have these accounts open automatically upon launch, or manually when needed. From there it only gets better. Figure 3 is open to the default General tab in Twhirl and has the basic account settings, with hooks into other providers. This was a great approach. Everyone is worrying about how to let you tweet from their own applications, but not many of the clients for Twitter want to be your primary client that sends updates to the other systems. Twhirl establishes itself as a primary client this way. If they allowed some Jabber interfaces as an option, or any other chat clients, you enter the world of true consolidated clients.

The preferences panel shown in Figure 4 directly assists you in the API issue that we receive warnings about. Previously, I described how to hover over the icon in the bottom right to get your current API usage. The Network tab lets you maneuver some fine tuning sliders and set a base API limit for your client. This helps to guarantee you will not go over the API limit Twitter has in place.

Notifications were addressed in Figure 5. From audible to small pop-up window notifications, they covered it. I enjoyed the ability to set a notification based on type of event (reply, direct) instead of just a global setting that is normally found in newer clients.TweetDeck was missing a preferences panel all together. You can manipulate the timeframe that is shown at the bottom of figure 2. That was about the entire ability of preferences. I was stunned.

Functionality and Capabilities

After UI, this is the most head to head area of the clients. A landslide victory here could make you overlook small UI and preference nuances that could be added later. I mentioned it above, but many people run multiple Twitter account names and Twhirl allows you to do them all. If they add in some more features that other developers are making (ie: music, pictures), there is not much left for Twhirl to do but create skins and increase performance. Twhirl utilized 86MB of RAM, while TweetDeck sat at 53MB. This is not a huge difference, nor a showstopper in any way with the amount of resources available in most machines.

TweetDeck, in the current release I tested (version 0.0151b), did not auto-update to the next version. While I was prompted that one was available, Twhirl would utilize Air to bring down the update and restart automatically. TweetDeck prompted me but took me back to the webpage for download instead. I then got the Air prompt as shown here in Figure 6.

Groups is an item Web sites such as CrowdStatus attempted to offer a solution for. I would love the ability to group those I follow into some smaller cliques. Then each clique could be updated on a different time basis that I independently set. While TweetDeck did not offer the alternate time updates, the grouping feature proved useful until it worked against me. I could not find a good way to create reasonable groups that made sense. If you follow too many people (this is subjective I know), try creating only a couple groups for close friends and associates and leave the rest for the main updating area.

TweetDeck does have one heck of a capability that is the sore point from a user perspective. Outages. TweetDeck offers the ability to send Tweets while Twitter does one of the most incredible disappearing acts known to man. Twitter can simply vanish for hours leaving tens of thousands stunned and amazed. TweetDeck can store these and send them when Twitter decides it has had enough vacation and comes back online.

Summary

I was fair in shutting one down while trying the other client, and then using it for extended times. I then also did tests with both running simultaneously. I came to the same consensus during both tests. Twhirl works better for me at this time. Now as TweetDeck grows, or even to your usage needs, it might be the better alternative. If you have comments, leave them here or find me on Twitter @IdoNotes.

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